


Cosmic Karma

by Sun_In_Your_Eyes



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, Pre-Kerberos Mission
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 10:20:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20172637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sun_In_Your_Eyes/pseuds/Sun_In_Your_Eyes
Summary: Shiro has no idea what he is getting into when visiting Sampson Memorial High School. And he is not ready for Keith Kogane.Of course, that’s when the universe decides to go to hell.





	Cosmic Karma

Shiro knew what his superiors were trying to do. Phasing him out of piloting and pushing him to instead give the recruitment talks. It was dull work and the schmoozing made him want to tear his hair out, but if he wanted to get to space he couldn’t afford to lose favour with the brass. Patience yielded focus. He could do this.

It wasn’t the first school he’d been elected to recruit from – apparently, as a legitimate space hero and ‘hot as fuck’ (Adam’s words, not his) he was pretty much free advertising. As a school in the town closest to the Galaxy Garrison, space exploration was a big deal, and Shiro’s most recent flights had been heavily featured on the local news. Besides, who didn’t want to be an astronaut when they were a kid? Shiro certainly had – he was just one of the lucky ones who had made that dream a reality. Everyone in the class was hanging off his every word, starry eyed.

Well. Almost everyone.

It was just the one kid. He was cute – scruffy black hair, big eyes with ridiculous eyelashes, razorblade cheekbones and jawline that said that in a few years he’d be a real looker – but what really struck Shiro was how gentle his expression was, a quiet wistfulness that said he knew voicing it would be a waste of time. He barely seemed to notice Shiro was there, chin resting on his palm as he stared out the window.

There was an invisible barrier between the sad eyes and his classmates. It wasn’t overt hostility, just the unspoken exclusion that Shiro couldn’t honestly say was any better. Not malice, just people following the status quo. They were teenagers. They weren’t cruel, just kids.

Shiro called out to him on a whim. The way the rest of the kids turned away was subtle but telling, quietly ostracizing the boy sitting on the curb, shoulders hunched and lip bitten. His clothes were faded and tattered at the hems, second-hand at best – but he settled into the seat of the simulator, lifted his chin and reached for the controls, steady despite his classmates deciding they had better things to do. And then he flew.

And hot _damn_, he flew. This simulator was the Garrison’s best – mimicking the visuals of space, although the mechanics that imitated the G-forces they’d experience in a real ship were disabled. It meant his classmates could crowd around his chair without being thrown around – an impressive heel-face turn, not even noticing they’d shoved Shiro out of the way. Honestly, Shiro didn’t blame them. This kid, whoever he was, had the best reflexes Shiro had ever seen.

The students’ loud disbelief faded into silent awe as that seemingly disinterested kid passed Level Three with increasing ease, weaving through asteroids, instinctively accommodating for G-forces he couldn’t feel, momentum that was only on screen. Shiro was mesmerised. The kid couldn’t have done anything like this before, not with how he’d taken most of the first level to figure out the controls, but after he had – shit. This was the same program used for cadets in their third year, and most of them still crashed on Level Four.

_What the hell_, Shiro thought, baffled. There were aptitude tests. How had this kid not been snatched up by everyone? Just. How.

“Keith?” the teacher said when Shiro asked. For the life of him, Shiro couldn’t remember her name. “He’s a bit of a discipline case. I’m not sure he’d necessarily fit in with the rigid Garrison culture.” Disdain dripped from every word.

Shiro was being introduced to someone, but the words fell on deaf ears. _Don’t bother_, she’d not said but had definitely meant. About…Keith?

_“—not lacking in aptitude, however, his disease—_

_—waste of time—_

“_…_best student in the school…"

Shiro fixed a smile on his face. What was the kid’s name, what’s-her-name had said it only seconds before, Shiro knew it, but he looked at the brown haired, brown eyed boy and felt nothing. _It’s an honor_, he’d said with a polite, transcultural bow.

Then the engine roared, and tires screeched, and he was left staring blankly as “Keith”, a natural pilot with more talent than Shiro had ever seen, drove off with his car.

Never mind how he got past the biometrics. Never mind that he was _fourteen_ and shouldn’t know anything about driving a motor vehicle.

Shiro should have been angry – furious even. Everything the class’s teacher had told him said that he was trouble. Trouble that had just stolen his car.

Adam would shake his head at him about this later, worry creasing his forehead, but Shiro just wanted to laugh.

He choked it back, though. He was a Very Serious Professional Officer-Sir-Yes-Sir, a role model of the Galaxy Garrison, a decorated space veteran. Grand auto theft was a Very Serious Crime, and Not Seriously Funny. No matter how tiny and adorable the offender.

**·**

**·**

**·**

Then it really wasn’t funny.

Shiro’s car was found two days later, tank empty but without a single scratch on it. In the meantime, he had tried to track down Keith’s parents – partly because did they have any idea how gifted their son was, and partly because their kid had_ stolen his car_. The class teacher Ms. Pattison (“please, call me Angela”) didn’t know; the school administration led him to a Mr. and Mrs. Santos, who had said he was too much trouble and had sent him back to the Home; then he’d found the Macquarie Children’s Home, who’d bluntly informed him that Keith Kogane was in the local juvenile detention center and was, frankly, no longer their problem.

And when he’d contacted the detention center…well, the bored receptionist had just asked him if he wanted to press charges.

Shiro had found a lot of things in his search, but hadn’t found a single person who cared about Keith. It painted a very ugly picture – as far as Shiro could tell, no one gave a damn about Keith. No wonder he acted out – Shiro had taken a psychology elective as a cadet, mostly because of the tall, gorgeous fellow cadet also taking the class, but Shiro knew enough to understand that any attention was better than being invisible. Keith could end up dead in a ditch, and Shiro suspected no one would even notice until someone tripped over the body. Everyone had just…given up on him.

“I don’t get it. I steal your car, and you respond by helping me out?”

“Yeah. So you owe me one,” Shiro said, hoping he sounded confident rather than completely off-balance. He’d come to the center expecting distrust, even hostility from Keith. Instead, he’d found a quiet, uncertain boy, who stared at him with wide eyes – Shiro couldn’t make up his mind if they were blue or gray.

“Be at this address at oh-eight-hundred hours.” Keith took the card, eyes lifting to him hesitantly, but nodded.

**·**

“—and not _one_ _scratch_…”

“…Takashi, are you telling me you offered to sponsor the kid who _stole your car_.”

The flatness of his words told Shiro Adam knew that was exactly what happened. And he wasn’t wrong about the theft, or that the reminder shouldn’t have made Shiro grin. But – fourteen at most, and he’d taken a turbo powered car and led most of the city’s police force and a chunk of the military on a high-speed chase that only stopped because he ran out of fuel but didn’t even leave a _scratch _on the paintjob. “He deserves a chance,” Shiro said instead, kissing Adam’s cheek and laughing as he was swatted out of the kitchen. “But really. You should have heard what his teacher was saying. That Keith was a waste of space and I shouldn’t bother.” Shiro’s mirth wilted a little. “I think he heard her.”

Adam paused though the pan still sizzled. “Remind me, what was her name?”

Shiro tried to keep his smile out of Adam’s line of vision. It had only been a few months since they’d moved in together, and even fewer months since Adam had started teaching his own classes, but there had been more than one occasion that Adam had come home panicking that _he _was the one guiding these tiny persons’ futures and what the hell _he wasn’t prepared for this_. Shiro had found it funny at the time – still did, honestly – but thinking of Keith at the detention centre, no trace of his alleged temper but utterly bewildered even at the concept of someone being kind for the sake of being kind…okay. Shiro kind of got it now.

Still. Adam’s affection for the people in his care was just one of the reasons Shiro loved him.

“I see you smirking there Takashi, you _will _be sleeping on the couch—” A spatula was waved in his direction, stove hissing, and Shiro let himself laugh.

·

(Adam gave up after twenty minutes of Shiro failing to fit himself on the loveseat, huffing exasperatedly as he flopped down on the pillows but smiling against Shiro’s fingers when he was tugged against his chest.)

·

·

·

On the Garrison’s recruitment tour, Shiro had spoken at no less than a hundred more schools. No less than two a state, each more crowded as neighbour schools were invited. Honestly, they blurred as Shiro was shuffled from class to class. No one else stole his car or even came _close _to clearing level three. Shiro supposed clearing five levels and only failing because he’d ducked out to take his car on a joyride (Shiro _still_ couldn’t figure out how Keith had bypassed the biometric locks) was a tough act to follow.

The phone call came twelve days before the new term started, the voice on the other end of the line quiet and hesitant. “Um…” they said, “is this…Shirogane Takashi?”

His name was carefully pronounced and in the traditional order. Shiro smiled, though he had no idea who was on the other end of the line. “That’s me. Can I ask who’s calling?”

“Um, it’s Keith. Keith Kogane, I mean. You, uh, talked about the Galaxy Garrison and then…you gave me this number and told me to call if I was interested?”

“Keith!” Shiro sat up, attention hyperfocusing. “It’s good to hear from you. How have you been?”

“…Okay? Ish.” A pause. “What about you?”

Shiro’s eyes darted to the monitor on his wrist. It had been months since it had last gone off. “Really well, actually.”

“I, uh, that’s good?” Keith inhaled deeply. “You told me to call if I was interested in getting into the Garrison. Is that still an option?”

The words came through clear and confident, very different to his previous stammering. Shiro found himself smiling. “Well, it’s short notice,” he drawled, “but I’ll see what I can do.”

·

Shiro didn’t have to participate in the welcome ceremony, to his relief. There was only so many times he could deliver that speech without silently thinking _the Galaxy Garrison is boring_. Space was not boring. Flying spaceships was _not _boring.

He could do without the PR, though.

In any case, while he hadn’t been asked to speak it had been heavily suggested that he attend. For student morale. Shiro was the face of the Garrison, the one who’d inspired these cadets. Adam had wisely made an excuse to exit the room at that point, so Shiro was on his own, attention never quite leaving Keith. For someone described as _undisciplined_, his eyes were steady, hands still where they were clasped behind his back.

It had been several months since Shiro had spoken at Keith’s school. He’d met a lot of kids who wanted to get into the Galaxy Garrison, and for whatever reason, they all seemed to think he’d remember them. Shiro smiled, said something that was hopefully motivational and relevant, then quickly excused himself to jog after Keith. At the call of his name he turned, eyes wide. He looked lost. “I, uh…Shiro?”

It had been easy to find him among the new cadets. Keith was oddly still, staying in rest position – despite being asked for – stood out where his classmates fidgeted then looked faintly guilty.

“Keith,” he repeated, clapping the cadet’s shoulder but retreating quickly as he tensed. Okay. Not a fan of physical affection (Shiro deliberately stomped on other possible interpretations for someone not wanting to be touched). “Nice to see you here. Any trouble settling in?”

“Erm. It’s okay? I didn’t have that much stuff, and I only have the one roommate, and he seems…quiet?” Keith’s hands start to make a gesture that is quickly aborted. “Talking really isn’t my strong suit, so… maybe?”

“Glad to hear it,” Shiro said reflexively, noting his hunched shoulders, the wide eyes of his classmates, and patted his head briefly before standing back. “Good luck. Montgomery is a perfectionist, but she’ll acknowledge you if you work hard. Iverson just likes yelling, no matter how well you fly. West…if you ask for help, he’ll give it. He’s kind and he cares. Just…try not to take advantage of it, he’ll burn out.”

Which was much more than Shiro had planned to say. Keith had stopped, lips parted and brow furrowed. Shiro flicked his shoulder gently with one finger then made like Steve McQueen, epic crash included.

·

·

·


End file.
